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Intel Unveils PC for Developing Nations
Poppler writes "Intel has announced it will produce a PC aimed at developing nations, the 'Community PC.' Instead of giving out minimal PCs to as many individuals as possible, Intel wants to sell these machines to 'kiosk owners' who will rent out use to their village. Price TBA. How does this stack up against the $100 laptop, in terms of helping the developing world?"
Firstly how long will a desktop PC and monitor run off of a battery, and how much hand cranking will be required for 10 minutes of use?
Okay, maybe these PCs will be located where there is a reliable power supply. That's not much use for many of the uses the $100 handheld PC will be used for though - education, textbook provision, assistance (e.g., farming techniques for farmers in the field).
There's no reason that this cannot co-exist, but it seems that Intel will pay $50m to the countries to get a stranglehold on the market and to destroy the competition. I'm sure that Microsoft will ride on the coattails of this, knowing that a country brought up using Windows will then be tied to it for a long time afterwards. I bet they'll offer another $50m soon just to enable this option. Then Brazil, etc, can think 'Spend $100m to get 1m laptops, or spend $0 and get 250k desktops'.
Can't you hearrrrr it calling? The computers will build another Empire!
Frankly this seems to be a better idea, and more realistic. I can't honestly see people out in rice patties cranking up their $100 laptop, but I can see a community sharing a fully featured PC to find out medical information and argicultural techniques in the center of town.
Hopefully either of the projects can become real.
Based in Cairo, Egypt here. We have long slagged the USD 100 laptop project, since for that price you can get a more functional second hand pc. What the market here needs is more efficient hardware trickle down mechanics, not new architectures.
Now, if they're building a kiosk, then the lest they can do is make the machine fnction in multiseat mode. This is possible both using Linux and windows.
But then again, that would translate to lower Intel sales, so I guess this is just another case of developing markets being receptacles for unworkable ideas developed by some guy in a suit in NY or CA whose idea of field visits involve brave runs down to the mall.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
These cheap PC for developing countries seem to be getting quite popular at the moment. Is this just a case of people in the technology industry trying to do something nice rather than meeting an actual need ?
I would have thought that other infrastructure is more important to developing nations than having access to a PC.
I'm a medical student and a technophile. I studied part of my third year clinicals in a third world nation with Doctors without Borders. Quite frankly, people who keep pushing for computers to be put into 3rd world nations don't seem to actually visit the poorest (and hence the most populous parts) of those places. The fact is that even a $100 put towards a computer can be better put towards generic versions of prescription drugs. Clean water, food, medical care and education are more important than any internet connection, laptop, or cellular phone. Unfortunately, Slashdot folks don't get it. A computer is nothing more than a tool that only matters when an educated and healthy population can utilize them.
There are lots of places where $1 an hour would be a very significant blocking point against general usage. In locations where a "normal" Internet cafe is commonplace (and affordable), I think that both this device and the hand-driven $100 laptop would be little more than an oddity.
Lets see, high on a rational priority list would be (just off the top of my head here):
...
1) Convince the Muslim clerics in Nigeria that the polio vaccine is not a Western conspiracy to kill off Muslims.
1a) Fix polio.
2) Stop the hysteria over genetically modified food, so that people can grow 'golden rice', rice modified to produce beta carotene, so that people who live only on rice, at least get some nutrition from it.
3) Provide real birth control options for developing nations.
4) Stop pouring money into China.
5) Get the French out of the Sudan, so that the UN can actually fix the problems there.
1001) Get them all laptops, so that the power of the Internet can Change Their Lives.
Seriously folks, stop the laptops-for-everyone circlejerk, and fix the real problems.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
From the article: Intel's Community PC is designed to withstand temperatures of 113 degrees Fahrenheit and up to 85 percent relative humidity, and has a removable dust filter.
See, this is a concrete example of the intelligent engineering behind this particular PC For The Poor. Negroponte's $100 laptop has a hand crank for powering it, but I do not recall hearing how it handled heat and humidity. (maybe he said somewhere but I don't see it)
Still, as someone who works for an international nonprofit that works to improve healthcare delivery systems in "Third World" countries... I am afraid that we are putting our attention and investments into some of the lesser problems. Can you e-mail food to a starving person? Can HTTP protect you from malaria? Honestly it's not the end user who needs reliable computing power and Internet access; it's the medical professionals, ministries of health, NGOs, etc., who need up-to-date information and communication capabilities.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
Intel is of course not happy with the $100 laptop since that runs on the AMD Geode processor. Intel is of course focusing on the "fully featured" "community sharing" idea because they want to stop the idea that having a limited CPU is sufficient for most tasks. I think that is the elephant in the room here: For most common tasks, like web browsing, document editing, and e-mail, a top of the line processor is simply not really required. Ars Technica has said it well.
Yeah, the biggest problem I have with the $100 laptop idea is that unless you give these to -everyone- in that Remote Village (TM), they'll quickly be sold and/or stolen for food, drugs or women. And even -if- they give them to everyone, what use is a wind-up toy laptop when you're barely able to eat?
End of lesson. You may press the button.
... and not the words of some hypocrites. It is very spectacular to build nice projects, run big ad campaigns. But when will they start to give something? I guess the answer is never. These guys give 5$ to the red cross, and that is their yearly offer for the poor. And I agree: we should first help them with food, medication and education. If this [wikipedia.org] is not a good reason for sticking to this order, then what? To say the least: I can't code when I'm starving or when I'm ill.
Wanna provide developing nations a PC for under $100?
DONATE your old PC.
Stop being a let's catch the headlines bullshitter and adress the PROBLEM instead of YOUR CORPORATE EGO.
'Developing Nations' have been developing for decades, yet they are still in poverty.
Now why is that? Shouldn't they be developed enough to create wealth and an educated populus? It seems to me that they are kept in poverty to suit the needs of other countries that exploit them. I hope a PC will help them, but I doubt it. Things need to change on a global economic scale first, then these nations might have a chance at creating a 'first world' society.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Does the developing nations need computers? Maybe...
Does the children at these nations need computers? Pehaps...
Does they need better EDUCATIONAL and WEALTH DIVISION policies? You can bet it!
I live at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. And I can tell you that most of the children here already has acces to computers. But they don't use them to study, they prefer to user them to play Counter-Strike.
Distribute free computers among the poor populations, and dump them at public schools has NO USE when the average teacher is underpaid... When there arent enought schools... When there is no social programs to make sure the children stay at school... When lots of children go to the local drug dealers to make money, because their mother are unenployed... When these children has a drunken dad, or no dad at all!
Don't get me wrong. I think that it would be fantastic if every children here at Rio de Janeiro, or at Brazil, has access to a computer. But the problem is, nobody is thinking what these children will do with these computers! How they fit within the current brazilian school model?
Computers are not the priority right now. And I gues this is the same situation on every other developing nation. Lets get the basic stuff first, like EDUCATION, and JOBS, and HOUSING... Then the governaments can start giving away free computers to garantee some more votes on the next election.
Just my $0.02
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
Wait a minute. To us it's only a dollar.
You can provide food and clothing for a child in a developing nation for a few cents a day, but they have money to pay for internet pr0n? They need to stop spending their money on teh internets and buy some damn food then. I'm glad I didn't sponsor one of those spoiled little kids then if they are just gonna use it to get internet access to send me spam.
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
Mexico a developing nation??? Hope that isn't flamebate... Mexico's nominal GDP is 675 billion or 6494$ per capita. Not exactly America's but not in the same class as developing nations by a long shot (which are less than 1000$ per capita).
Give them the illusion of choice and they will blindly follow for they choose not to make one.
Each and every country was "third world" status at some point in time. There's a reason the "developed" world became "developed" and it all starts with the rule of law, security, stability, a free market economy and, in most cases, democracy. If you really want to help you should be less focused on cheap laptops and more focused on what I've just listed. It reminds me of the old adage: "Catch a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime". If we can encourage the rule of law, security, stability, a free market economy and get these nations on a path toward democracy then all of this will be a moot point because they'll either be building their own laptops or have the means to buy them. Don't treat the symptoms, cure the disease.
1 person using a 100.00 laptop for 10 hours a day or 10 people using a 1000.00 laptop for an hour a day each. While only an hour that person could probably get more done than with the 1000.00 kiosk machine and more people could gain access too it.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler